Mind and heart of Christ

Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way (Prov. 23:19). Out of the heart con­tin­u­al­ly pro­ceed thoughts which some­times are good, but more of­ten are evil. The evil ones should not be fol­low­ed at all, but even the good ones should not al­ways be car­ried out. It hap­pens that even thoughts which are good in and of them­selves are in­ap­pro­pri­ate in re­al­i­ty, due to cir­cum­stances. This is why it is pre­scribed to be at­ten­tive to­ward one­self, to keep an eye on all that pro­ceeds out of the heart — to re­ject the evil, con­sid­er what is good, and ful­fil on­ly what proves to be tru­ly good. But best of all would be to to­tal­ly im­pris­on the heart, so that noth­ing leaves it and noth­ing en­ters it with­out the per­mis­sion of the mind; so that the mind would come first in all things, de­ter­min­ing the move­ments of the heart. But the mind is this way on­ly when it is the mind of Christ. Thus, unite with Christ in mind and heart and ev­ery­thing with­in you will be in good work­ing or­der.